Hillsborough

Andy Burnham Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

A year has passed since our last Hillsborough debate. That year has brought momentous events that many people thought they would not live to see. The truth has finally been established—more difficult to take, not less, for the passage of time, as the Home Secretary said. The tragedy was entirely foreseeable —it could and should have been prevented. Lives should have been saved. There was a campaign of vilification with no justification.

Those truths have been told only because of the sheer love of mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters—a love that would not let them give in, a love that provided strength when hope was lost and provided dignity in the face of provocation. Those truths were also told because of the people of a city that truly understands what solidarity and loyalty mean, who locked arms around these families—red and blue together—and supported them for every step on the hardest road imaginable. At last, the entire country can see what Liverpool has lived with for 23 years. Parliament, too, has finally woken up to the full horror of Hillsborough.

We have heard many powerful speeches this evening from both sides of the House. We have heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Halton (Derek Twigg), for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) and for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), who have done so much to help the campaign, and from my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett). On the other side of the House, we have heard from the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), who spoke from her personal experience, and from the hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke). What is clear from those outstanding speeches is that, rather than the closure that people glibly talk of, the report has opened questions of the most profound kind for the institutions of our country, our Parliament and our society. As the debate comes to a close, I want to set out clearly what I believe those questions are. Before I do so, I want to speak for the Opposition in adding to the tributes that we have heard.

In the Church’s history, it is hard to think of a better example of one of its leading members fulfilling the functions of his office with more distinction or doing a greater service for the city and people under his direct pastoral care. The Right Rev. James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool, has brought light to people who for 23 years have been trapped in the blackest of tunnels, but he has done more. Through his leadership, he has shown the relevance of the Church to Britain today. Through him, the Church has succeeded where the state had failed, in bringing truth and the beginnings of reconciliation to a tragedy arising from a divided Britain.

We thank all the members of the panel for what they have done, and we thank the secretariat, under the leadership of Ken Sutton and Ann Ridley, for its outstanding support. Tonight, I pay particular tribute to Professor Phil Scraton. Of this I am sure: the full truth about Hillsborough would never have been known were it not for his meticulous efforts over many years, turning over stones that others had walked past. Professor Scraton has done a huge service not just to the Hillsborough families but to this country, and I hope the House will join me in acknowledging it tonight.

What is striking about the panel’s report is its thoroughness and the sheer comprehensiveness and quality of the painstaking researching that underpins it, carried out by the research team at Queen’s university, Belfast. I hope that the Government will consider that approach, with the emphasis on disclosure, not adversarial argument, a model for resolving other contested issues arising from our past.

There can be no doubt of the incredible emotional impact that the panel’s work has already had on the people most directly affected by the tragedy. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) said, to be in Liverpool on the night of 12 September this year was to see a collective weight lifted from so many shoulders, which I will never forget.

I do not think we have begun fully to appreciate the scale of the suffering and loss, the true human cost of the tragedy, and the devastating psychological impact on survivors. From the midst of the most harrowing scenes imaginable—truly, hell on earth—thousands of them were simply left to drift home from Hillsborough, to try to make sense of what they had seen without counselling or support. Even worse, they were left to read in the days that followed that they were in some way to blame for what had happened. People talk to me of the lost souls that are scattered throughout the communities of Merseyside, the north-west and beyond, haunted by what they saw and never the same again. Tonight I think about them as we finally put right this terrible wrong. Does the Health Secretary agree that never again should people suffering trauma and shock on such a scale be left without the counselling and support that they need for their mental health? Will he give serious thought to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) about support for such services on the ground now?

In making this speech tonight, I think of my constituent Stephen Whittle, who on the morning of 15 April 1989 gave his ticket to a friend who never came home, and who just over a year ago took his own life, leaving everything he had to the Hillsborough families. Recent events will have been unbearably painful for Stephen’s family, but I hope they will take some comfort from the fact that the campaign that he cared about has finally prevailed.

Tonight, I also want to mention Carl Brown, 19 when he died at Hillsborough, not from Liverpool but a Leigh lad—a reminder that this tragedy affected everyone everywhere. It was a national tragedy, and we must all work to bring accountability and justice.

I pay tribute again this evening to the Prime Minister for the way he responded to the panel’s report, the tone that he set and the events that he has set in train ever since. I thank the Home Secretary for her speech today, her leadership and the personal commitment that she has shown to achieving justice for the 96. If I may, I want to leave two points with her this evening.

First, we welcome what the Home Secretary said about the co-ordination of the criminal process and investigation. It is important that we have clear leadership of the whole process, supported by a well resourced, professionally led, integrated investigation, not a series of parallel and unco-ordinated investigations. I hope she will continue to update the House on those important points.

Secondly, these are of course complicated matters that will take time to resolve, but the families have waited long enough. I urge the Government to ensure that public bodies and individuals conducting further work keep that thought in the front of their minds when carrying out their duties.

The impact of the panel’s report has already been immense, but the full enormity of what it reveals has not yet sunk in. It shakes our faith in the very foundations of our society, and in the organisations that exist to protect us and see that justice is done. If we are to learn from the report, those institutions must face up to fundamental questions, and in the time remaining to me this evening I wish to identify five areas of concern.

I will start with football, because of all the organisations in the frame, I believe that the football organisations have the furthest to go in facing up to their responsibilities—in fact, I do not think they have ever really started to do that in 23 years. The Hillsborough independent panel presents football with failings of the first order. A decade of warnings, starting with the 1981 FA cup semi-final, was not acted on. A ground known to be unsafe was made dangerous by modifications that were not recorded in the safety certificate. In short, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton said, it was a ground operating outside the law.

What possible explanation can the club offer for failing to ensure the safety of people who paid money to enter Hillsborough, and why did the FA choose a ground for one of the biggest games of the season that, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire said, was not certified as safe? Neither Sheffield Wednesday nor the FA has ever answered those questions. What are we to make of the revelation in the panel’s report that the FA received complaints about the 1988 semi-final between the same two teams, one of which warned in stark terms that the ground was “a death trap”? Were those complaints acted on? Not only does it seem that nothing was done, but the guardian of the game in this country chose to bring the same fixture with the same teams back to the same ground the following year, prompting the question of whether the game’s governing body believed that it had any responsibility to listen to supporters, act on their complaints or ensure their safety and welfare. It is hard to conclude that it did.

For years, people were coming away from Hillsborough with tales of panic and distress. Is there any other part of our national life in which we would tolerate thousands of people going to a leisure venue and routinely coming away with injuries, broken bones, stories of frightening breathlessness, and authorities that do nothing about it? It reveals an unpleasant mentality that still pervades parts of the football industry, and a casual disregard for the paying customer. Costs were cut to the bone and safety was sacrificed on the altar of crowd control.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), I remember my experiences at Hillsborough, and it angers me to remember that, when I stood with my younger brother and my dad on the Leppings Lane terrace in January 1988 for an FA cup third-round game, throughout the whole second half I was not watching the match but the backs of their heads. I did not let them out of my sight because I feared for their safety in the unbearable conditions of those central pens. There was a feeling that the football club had taken our money but could not be sure of our safety, having failed to take essential legal steps. It makes me angry to think of that and the thousands of people who were put at risk.

That is why I found it hard in September to see a response from football that was stunning in its inadequacy and left people wondering whether the football organisations will ever face up to their responsibilities. In their initial statements, neither the Football Association nor Sheffield Wednesday football club offered one single word of apology to the families. On Thursday 13 September, the FA had to issue a second statement when that was pointed out, and Sheffield Wednesday convened an emergency meeting on 11 September to rewrite a draft statement that contained no word of apology. That says it all, and as far as I can establish, the FA has not yet had a meeting to consider the panel’s report and its implications for the game’s governing body.

The hirer of Hillsborough and the ground’s owner both had a duty of care and a basic responsibility to ensure that a semi-final venue had an up-to-date safety certificate. Their failure to do that was, in my view, grossly negligent, as was the failure to act on warnings and complaints. That is why the families, rightly, cannot accept that the disaster was accidental, and why football must be forced to face up to its responsibilities in the inquiries to come.

Secondly, I will consider the media, but I will balance my remarks by mentioning some exceptions. In the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the disaster, an article by the outstanding investigative journalist David Conn prompted me to start thinking about setting up the disclosure process, and led me, together with my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood, to make the first public call for an inquiry.

The Mirror can take pride in its efforts supporting the families, the Liverpool Echo has given unwavering support, and ITV’s commissioning of Jimmy McGovern’s Hillsborough drama kept the story alive, but all that is overshadowed by the incalculable damage caused by the most hurtful lies imaginable printed as truth at an entire city’s moment of greatest grief. It was not just The Sun newspaper, appalling as it was, but many other newspapers. Why has the media industry never truly faced up to its moral failings on Hillsborough and the pain it caused people? Why did it not realise its own wrongdoing or propose proper redress to the families? Why, 20 years on, are bereaved families still facing outrageous intrusions into their grief?

Why did The Sun think it appropriate, some years on, to travel to Liverpool to make an offer to the families to pay for and build a sports centre and to give an apology only on the condition that the families accept the apology in full? The families did not owe The Sun anything. What does it say about the ethics of the media industry that an apology was presented to the families on those terms?

It is clear to me that Hillsborough was a forerunner of more recent events under the consideration of Lord Leveson—an early warning of out-of-control media that was not acted on. I urge Lord Leveson to call the Hillsborough families before he concludes his inquiry. I ask him to ask this fundamental question: how did the media leave this story alone when pursuing so many other trivial causes with much greater ferocity when the amended statements were in the public domain for so long? That was a professional failure to focus on what really matters and to give the proper redress that the families deserve.

Thirdly, on the coroner service, I have two simple questions. How could it ever have allowed a situation in which a parent finds out for the first time on 12 September 2012 what happened to their child on 15 April 1989? What assurance will it provide that never again will we see the denial of fundamental parental rights for 23 years?

Fourthly, on the police service, I recognise the force of the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough that the officers on the ground were also let down by their seniors. However, we will watch how the police service responds to the report, which will affect public confidence. I make this simple statement: the service must not allow retirement to be a route to avoid full public accountability, as the hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell said. To allow it to do so would damage public confidence in the service, as would a situation in which the council tax payers of Merseyside pay for the pensions of people who are found to have acted improperly.

We learn in the panel’s report of a campaign orchestrated from the very top—it was ordered by the chief constable of the force—and of the shocking revelation that his officers were to have a “free hand” in preparing a “rock solid story” to exonerate the force and blame the fans. That is prima facie evidence of a failure of policing of a terrible kind—self-protection over public protection.

In responding to the panel’s report, we must not make the mistake of thinking that it was a one-off, exceptional, isolated event. David Conn was the first to draw the parallel with Orgreave, which a number of hon. Members have mentioned, and which has featured today on the main BBC news for the first time in many years. There are echoes of the Hillsborough story in the Orgreave story—statements amended; an institutional effort to shift blame. It is uncomfortable, but what has been revealed goes far deeper than many people would like to believe. The temptation will be to box Hillsborough off as isolated, but that cannot happen. The cultural problem must be addressed.

That brings me—fifthly and finally—to the questions for this Parliament and this House of Commons. We are good at asking questions of others, but this one is for us. How did we let an injustice on this scale stand for so long? Ultimately, the failings are ours. The panel’s report is an invitation to us to ask the most searching questions of ourselves. We failed to legislate for public accountability. We allowed a culture of cover-up. An entire English city was crying foul, rightly saying that there had been a great injustice, but their voices were not heard here in this House. No political party did enough to help them and, worse, we have a political class that looked down on Liverpool. I am left wondering whether this could ever have happened to another city. Every Member of this House should read chapter 12 of the panel’s report and ask how it ever happened that a propaganda campaign to impugn ordinary citizens of this country got a platform in the rooms of this Parliament and how, beyond a few stray voices at the meeting, the alarm bells were not ringing throughout this place.

We talk proudly of the mother of all parliaments, and of the reputation of British justice, but this adversarial tradition in politics and the law, in which two versions of the truth battle it out, allows on occasion the wrong version of “the truth” to win and it is often the version with the greater connections to power. For the Hillsborough independent panel report we can pick up the same threads as we find in the Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday and as we have heard in the Leveson inquiry. All three reveal a country where the powerful and the connected hold the cards, where the concerns of ordinary people were dismissed—a country with an unaccountable establishment that at times colludes in its own self-interest and self-protection.

Hillsborough is a story of an abuse of power, of class and of unequal access to justice. I do not want to live in a country where that can ever happen again, where ordinary people can ever be treated in this way again. That is why I want this to be a watershed moment when this generation of politicians, this Parliament, truly learns the lessons of Hillsborough and builds a country where power is properly shared, where it does not take 23 years for ordinary people to overturn injustice and where news organisations cannot ride roughshod over people at their lowest ebb. Let us work together for greater powers to hold the police to account; let us bring proper redress for people damaged by an out of control press and implement Lord Leveson’s recommendations; and let us make more changes that connect Parliament with people, never forgetting that it was the public who forced Hillsborough back on to the Floor of this House a year ago. This must be a humbling moment for this proud Parliament, but in honour of the 96, let us make it a moment of change.

Hillsborough Disaster

Andy Burnham Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

We are here tonight because 139,815 people have asked this House to revisit events 22 years old. They are right, because those events concern one of the biggest injustices of the 20th century. For 22 years, the Hillsborough families faced insults and had obstacles placed in their way at every step as they pursued their dignified campaign for truth and justice.

Recognising that, a call for full disclosure was made on the 20th anniversary. That has gathered momentum ever since, and this summer it was supported by people from all over the country and supporters of all football clubs. That was an incredible statement of solidarity with those families, who have faced a hard and, at times, lonely struggle. However, it did something else: it sent the clearest of messages to everyone in a position of authority that the families have suffered far too much, and that the whole truth about Hillsborough must finally be told.

Tonight, the Home Secretary has made an unequivocal commitment to full disclosure, echoing the words of the Prime Minister in his letter to me. We thank her for that. The fact that there is now agreement between all parties across the House shows the watching world that this is not about party politics but about the fundamental rights of victims and their families. I should also like to thank the Home Secretary for leading the Government’s response to the debate tonight. That sends an important signal to the families who have travelled to be here, and to the thousands of others watching closely at home who have been deeply affected by the tragedy. The right hon. Lady might have expected to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) opposite her tonight, but my right hon. Friend has graciously allowed me to respond for the Opposition, given my personal involvement in these matters. I thank her for that.

I want to begin by addressing this simple question: why are almost 140,000 people asking us to do more? There have certainly been other disasters in which concerns have remained long after the event. As with other disasters, there are things about Hillsborough that people will find shocking, such as the fact that the ground did not have a valid safety certificate, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) mentioned. But something else makes Hillsborough stand apart. Has there ever been, and will there ever be, another tragedy at which, within minutes, an orchestrated campaign began to blame the victims, their families, friends and fellow supporters? That is precisely what happened there. It is unprecedented in the recent history of our country, and an unbelievable act of brutality against 96 families already suffering unbearable grief. As one bereaved mother said:

“We soon realised that we weren’t only in a fight for justice for those who died but also to clear their names and the names of the fans who lived”.

Those are words that no mother in her position should ever have had to say.

The first damaging lie about Hillsborough came even as people lay dying, not long after 3.15, from a senior public servant, the officer in charge on that day. Chief Superintendent Duckenfield told the then chief executive of the Football Association that Liverpool fans had forced gate C, as my hon. Friend said. That was not true; he had given permission for the gate to be opened. Professor Phil Scraton wrote in his brilliant book, “Hillsborough—the Truth”:

“Graham Kelly unwittingly…repeated Duckenfield’s lie to the waiting media. Within minutes, it was broadcast to the world: an appalling disaster was happening, and Liverpool fans were to blame.”

Sadly for the families, that set the level for what was to follow. Blood alcohol levels were taken from the victims, including children, as they lay dead in the gymnasium at Hillsborough. By today’s standards, that is an unthinkable intrusion into the private grief of the families. As the families arrived at Hillsborough later that day to identify loved ones, they were subjected to police questioning as though they, and the deceased, were suspects. In the ’80s, the authorities could get away with that type of behaviour—people just had to put up with it—but by today’s standards, it is truly shocking.

There was much worse to come, however. Days later, the most sickening lies imaginable were briefed by public servants to newspapers throughout the land. It was a brutal campaign to set public opinion against the supporters and to pre-empt the public inquiry that was to be carried out by Lord Justice Taylor. Let me remind the House that Taylor found that hooliganism played no part in the Hillsborough disaster, and that the main reason for it was the “failure of police control”. Yet even today, people talk about Hillsborough in the context of hooliganism. Casual allegations are still made about drunkenness and disorder. The fact that this still happens, 22 years on, is testimony to the power of the poison in those police briefings to the media. It is also clear that efforts were made not only to shape public opinion but to shape the way in which evidence was presented to the inquiries that would follow.

We hope that the House will tonight give the Hillsborough independent panel the full power and authority to tell the whole truth about Hillsborough, but there are already documents in the public domain that provide clear evidence of the efforts that went on to present events in a certain way. I want to share some of them with the House tonight, as they will help to explain to people who perhaps have not followed every detail down the years why so many people still feel so strongly about this, as we do.

In the House of Lords, there are files containing the original personal statements of police officers who witnessed these terrible events at first hand. They are hard to read, so distressing are the scenes they describe. One in particular stands out, and I have it with me this evening. It is the handwritten statement of police constable No. 227 from Woodseats police station. These are his recollections of the crucial moments just after 3 pm on 15 April 15 1989:

“I realised at that time that a great tragedy had occurred. I began to feel myself being overcome with emotion, but soon realised that I would be of no use to anyone if I felt sorry for myself. I was assisted out of the terracing and onto the pitch. I saw several officers wandering about in a dazed and confused state. Some were crying and some simply sat on the grass. Members of the public were running about with boarding ferrying people from the pitch to the far end of the ground.”

PC 227’s words evoke the haunting TV images that people were later to see replayed time and again. There can be little doubt of their sincerity, but they are not the only words on the page. Attached to the top right corner of the statement is a note from a senior officer. It reads:

“Last 2 pages require amending. These are his own feelings. He also states that PCs were sat down crying when the fans were carrying the dead and injured. This shows they were organised and we were not. Have the PC re-write the last 2 pages excluding the points mentioned.”

In the cold light of 2011, those are truly shocking words. They go to the heart of the untold story of Hillsborough. The unforgettable words

“they were organised and we were not”

transport us straight back to a very different time: an era of “them and us”, when football supporters were considered to be the “enemy within”. It is as though the officer was describing a battle for supremacy between two sides rather than the immediate aftermath of a terrible tragedy.

I do not think that it is widely understood that the personal statements of police officers were collected and amended in that way, outside the normal procedures. That is why the panel’s work and its report are so important. They will mean that the rest of the country will finally see what the Hillsborough families were up against, and what they have known for years. PC 227’s statement was not the only one that was amended. Many more were, in order to portray events in a certain way, removing references to police failure on the day such as the lack of proper radio communications.

Hillsborough belonged to an entirely different era, predating the Freedom of Information Act, when public bodies held all the power. As a result, it is still not known who was responsible for the efforts to amend statements, the level at which that was endorsed in the South Yorkshire police, and the extent to which the then Government supported the police strategy of blaming the supporters. I say this not to make a political point. This is crucial to understanding how and why the police case against the supporters came to gather such potency, pre-empting the public inquiry.

Another area that I hope will be illuminated by the disclosure process is the 3.15 cut-off imposed by the coroner, and the way in which the inquests were subsequently organised. It is impossible to overstate the significance of this to the families, as the effect of it was to compound earlier injustices that they had faced. It means that they have never had the opportunity properly to test all the evidence and information about their loved ones, or to find out if any more could have been done for them. One of the individuals admitted to hospital recovered, challenging the theory that irreparable damage was done in all cases by 3.15. Indeed, there is medical evidence from one of the doctors who treated victims on that day which was never properly heard. The 3.15 cut-off was cruel. It was also crucial, because it denied the families the right properly to challenge the inaccurate claims that had been put around about their loved ones.

I am setting out these issues this evening because many of them will not be widely known around the country. They explain why the sense of injustice about Hillsborough and its aftermath on Merseyside has never diminished. They were the reason that, together with my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) I made the first call for full public disclosure in April 2009, days before the memorial service on the 20th anniversary.

As the Home Secretary said, this led to the establishment of the Hillsborough independent panel, and I appreciate the continued support that she and her Government have provided to that panel’s work. At the time it was established there was an unresolved debate within government about whether or not Cabinet minutes and other documents should be published. I have always been of the firm opinion that they should, but because there was no agreement, the terms of reference allow the panel only to view rather than publish the material.

I knew we would have to come back to this issue; that duly happened in the summer when the Information Commissioner ruled on the BBC’s freedom of information request. I said then that I believed the commissioner’s ruling should have been immediately accepted by the Government and proposals developed to fulfil it, working through the panel with disclosure to families first. I have no doubt that the Government were acting to protect the integrity of the panel and the interests of the families and not—the Home Secretary made this point—to prevent disclosure. As I said in my letter to the Prime Minister, however, the Government’s handling of their response to the commissioner risked undermining public trust in the panel and the disclosure process.

The Home Secretary has this evening removed any lingering doubt and put the Government’s commitment to full disclosure firmly on the record. We thank her for the clarity of her words, but for the avoidance of doubt, does she agree that there might be a case for issuing the Hillsborough independent panel with updated terms of reference, reflecting the clear will of this House tonight? That might also present an opportunity to set out the Government’s position on any redactions to disclosed material. I believe that there should be a clear presumption of no redactions to any material. I am told, and the Home Secretary repeated it, that there might be highly personal medical information that it would be illegal to put in the public domain under the Data Protection Act. If that is the case, may I ask her to ensure that any redactions have the full support of the panel and may I suggest that they be made to any documents only with the agreement and support of the Hillsborough families?

I would like to assure the Home Secretary that the Opposition fully support the Government’s policy of handling all disclosures through the panel and making them available to the families first. The Opposition urge both the Information Commissioner and the BBC to accept that as fulfilment of the ruling. Disclosure is important, but it is only part of the panel’s crucial work. It has also been asked to make sense of it all, producing a report on how what is disclosed adds to public understanding of the tragedy and its aftermath. That is hugely important. It means that the whole story and its full impact will finally be told. That is why I support the Government’s position to release documents not now in a haphazard and unco-ordinated way, but when the whole picture is put together and all the pieces are in place.

I wish to deal now with material held by private bodies and its potential disclosure. It is possible that there are documents and material held by private organisations that will be highly relevant to the work of the Hillsborough independent panel. I understand that Sheffield Wednesday football club and the Football Association have both co-operated with the panel, and I thank them for that.

Clearly, however, there are other private organisations that will have material that might help the panel’s work. The first is Hammond Suddards, the solicitors for the South Yorkshire police. It was involved in the preparation of police officers’ statements, and, indeed, the amendment of them, and the handling of the inquest. The second is News International. In The Guardian today, Margaret Aspinall, chair of the Hillsborough family support group, has called on the company to reveal the sources of the deeply hurtful front page of Wednesday 19 April. It was claimed that Liverpool supporters—my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton mentioned this—pick-pocketed victims, urinated on police officers and attacked an officer giving the kiss of life.

It is important to say that The Sun was not the only newspaper to carry inaccurate and deeply hurtful lies. Allegations on the same theme were reported by the Daily Star, Daily Express, Daily Mail and Yorkshire Post, all using unattributed quotes from police and Police Federation sources. Lord Justice Taylor commented in his report on how they were not substantiated by a single witness. For people in public positions to disseminate such offensive untruths certainly breaks professional ethics and is possibly a criminal act. It might have happened 22 years ago, but the pain caused by those lies is still felt today.

Does the Home Secretary share my view that Margaret Aspinall is right to assert the families’ right to know who gave those briefings and with what authorisation? I hope she will agree with me that media organisations, and particularly News International, should be approached by the panel and encouraged to hand over any material that might reveal who made these claims. It is my belief that the British public, following the revelations about phone hacking, will see Hillsborough in a new light. That, too, is a story of unacceptable collusion between police and the press, working against the wider public interest, and it, too, must be fully exposed, with those responsible held to account.

In conclusion, 140,000 voices have swept Hillsborough back to the Floor of this House tonight, but we would not be here if it were not for the courage and determination of the families. Soon, they will be able to rest, knowing that they could not possibly have done more for their loved ones. I pay tribute to the Hillsborough family support group—to Trevor Hicks, Phil Hammond and Margaret Aspinall; to Hope for Hillsborough, and to the Hillsborough justice campaign for keeping the flame alive for the 96.

I have not seen the files. I do not know what they will reveal, but I am already clear about one thing—that, after a tragedy on this scale, the denial of families’ rights and the denigration of their friends and fellow supporters is a national scandal. When the panel reports, it will require an appropriate national response.

I can remember 15 April 1989 as if it were yesterday. I was at Villa Park for the other FA cup semi-final. Many of my friends were at Hillsborough. Twenty years later, I agonised about whether to attend the memorial service as a Government representative. No issue matters more to me, and I was worried that I would not be able to keep my composure before the Kop, but I also had my own private disappointments that my own Government had not done enough to help those families. I look back on my decision to go as the best decision I have made in my life because the reaction of people on the Kop that day told the rest of the country that there was a deep and unresolved injustice.

That night, I met the families at Liverpool town hall. I promised them full disclosure, that the whole truth would be told. Tonight, to have the entire House united behind them in that call and behind those families is a huge moment. Part of the painful truth of Hillsborough is that none of us, no political party, did enough to help. This time, we must not let them down.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—